Dear Richard,
Thank you for your comment. As you know, there are significant ethics and data-privacy issues revolving around the use of whole-genome sequencing data. The patients used in this study were consented in such a way that only access to their raw data through a DACO is permissible. Perhaps in the future, additional Challenges will be able to use public domain tumour/normal cancer data pairs. In the meantime, we have tried to facilitate the data-access approval process by providing template answers (https://www.synapse.org/#!Synapse:syn312572/wiki/60702) and of course have created the synthetic data for those who may not which to seek DACO approval. Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions!
Sincerely,
Katie on behalf of the ICGC-TCGA DREAM SMC Challenge Team